


Interlude: The Great Frost of 1684

by bene_elim



Series: Innocence and Experience [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 17th Century, Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley attend the Frost Fair of 1684 and that's about it, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Gen, Historical References, Holding Hands, I tried to be historically accurate but theres not much abt the 1684 frost fair out there, Ice Skating, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, expect... sort of not really, no shakespearean or archaic language used bc i Can't do that, sort of... more like One moment in history, there is a Teeny Tiny bit of sadness but that comes from their Pining for each other Forever, there's... not much happening here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-02 13:13:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20276476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bene_elim/pseuds/bene_elim
Summary: In which Crowley and Aziraphale attend the Frost Fair during the Great Frost of 1684. Crowley buys Aziraphale a card, Aziraphale struggles to not think about holding Crowley's hand.-"He startled when he felt Crowley's arm slide off his shoulder.'No, don't-' he started, about to plead that Crowley not let go lest he fall on the unforgiving ice again. He stopped mid-sentence because his gloved hand suddenly found itself full of Crowley's gloved hand.He stared at their joined hands. How terribly strange, seeing them like that together. Black, fur-lined leather gloves so much more elegant than his own old woolly white ones. They'd never touched before today. Now they were holding hands."





	Interlude: The Great Frost of 1684

**Author's Note:**

> A little interlude, giving a backstory to a throwaway line in _How You & I Are Blossoming_ about how Aziraphale had attended a Frost Fair with Crowley once. It grabbed me when I wrote it and I couldn't stop imagining the two of them holding on to each other so as not to fall, and Crowley buying Aziraphale a card from Croom. Honestly, I'm a little obsessed with the idea of a Frost Fair. It's a shame the Thames doesn't freeze over anymore!
> 
> As a little historical background for those who don't know: from between earlyish 1600s to mid 1800s, the river Thames froze over a number of times and sometimes for periods as long as two months. During these times, fairs would be held on the ice with all the activities you could imagine; reportedly, one of the fairs in the 1800s had an elephant parading about. Those ostentatious Victorians, huh? 
> 
> Anyway, I'm currently working on the next part of this series (chapter one is finished). This was just for a little fun. 
> 
> I... have not looked this over. I wrote it in one go and its almost two a.m and I have a wedding to go to tomorrow, so screw it. Let me know if there are any major mistakes. 
> 
> Also, I would once again like to thank everyone who commented on my other two works. You've been a great source of confidence and encouragement and it's because of you I was able to write this as quickly as I did.

It was 1684 and it was dreadfully, dreadfully, dreadfully cold. London had gained a frosting of ice as part of its seasonal decoration.

And the Thames had frozen over.

It had frozen in parts before, but never like this.

Such is the way of things that very soon merchants and tradesmen began to take their business out onto the ice, unusable as the river was by any boat. And then others ventured out too, to hold puppet shows and sell souvenirs and hold games. Some took to the ice in their normal shoes, slipping and sliding; others chose to slip and slide in ice skates.

Aziraphale watched the beginnings of the icy carnival from London Bridge, which was partly responsible for the frozen river, and felt terrible concern and disapproval as well as a longing to join in the fun.

Crowley appeared at his elbow.

'Looks awful fun, doesn't it?' he asked in a tone of voice that Aziraphale had come to associate with the beginning of a temptation.

'It looks dangerous and ill-advised,' he replied irritably. He watched a man set out markers to contain an area specifically for those wanting to skate around; he watched children hold their parents' hands while watching puppet shows or listening to storytellers; he watched people play cricket and football and talk to their friends with drinks in their hands.

'Come on, everything fun _is_ dangerous! Live a little, angel!'

Well, he was really quite cold and those glasses of hot mulled wine he could spy being served at that makeshift pub _did _look very welcoming. He supposed there wouldn't be any harm in just… taking a look around. He could claim he was just making sure no one did anything nefarious if Heaven ever asked him what he was doing.

'Alright, Crowley, let's go,' he said. They climbed down to the Embankment together and miracled skates onto their feet.

As soon as Aziraphale stepped one foot on the ice, he lost balance. Crowley bent over laughing on the bank.

Aziraphale's cheeks heated. 'You try, then!' He cried, scrabbling around and waving his arms in an effort to not fall again.

Crowley gingerly extended one foot onto the river; the smile was already sliding off his face with the same rapidity that others were falling around them.

He placed the other foot out.

He straightened from his concentrated slouch with all the speed of a young girl being made to move with a stack of books on her head; he held his arms out at his sides, widened his stance and, just as the smile was returning on his face with a colouring of triumph, he toppled over.

Aziraphale tried in all his might to hold back the _told you so _smirk that wanted to erupt on his face. It just wouldn't be proper angelic behaviour. Crowley saw it anyway.

'Alright, alright,' he muttered. 'So it's a little difficult.' He pushed himself upright and stood next to Aziraphale. They must look a pair, Aziraphale thought, standing like they expected a particularly strong breath of wind to knock them over. Thankfully many others were in the exact same position, unaccustomed as they were to keeping their balance on ice.

_Ice_. Really? He'd been warned a century or two back by Gabriel that the Northern Hemisphere would experience a minor, little, teeny-tiny ice age - nothing _too_ extreme, mind, but just for your information, Aziraphale - but he had never expected the _Thames_ to freeze over. This was England, not the Netherlands!

Crowley placed a hand on his shoulder. He jolted in surprise.

'What are you-?'

'Shut up, do you want to fall again? Just hold on.'

With Crowley's hand on his shoulder and his own hand on Crowley's elbow, they started to skate towards the centre of the river, where the most activity was. They passed a number of people in fancy dress, as though this was Venice during Carnival, and a number of loose children who cared for neither themselves or others, judging from how they ran riotously around. Aziraphale was just glad that they were a fair distance from the makeshift cricket pitch; he didn't fancy getting hit with a flyaway cricket ball.

'Here,' Crowley said, 'Mulled wine?'

They had somehow managed to get to one of the hastily set up pubs without falling again. Aziraphale nodded absently, distracted by his wonder at the rickety tables and chairs around them and the joyous, red-faced patrons toasting each other. The pub was, technically, no different to any of the pubs that existed on land; was the prospect of being out on the river, knowing the ice could give at any moment, really so exciting?

A glass was pushed into his hand. He'd hardly even noticed Crowley leaving and returning, busy as he was looking around himself. Perhaps this wasn't quite as bad as he had imagined; people were enjoying themselves, after all, and there didn't seem to be too much opportunity for evil to be done. He was with Crowley; he could keep an eye on him.

Crowley downed his mulled wine in a gulp.

'Fancy a skate, angel?' He said, eyes on the growing group of people gliding with grace within the designated ice rink area.

Aziraphale's stomach turned at the very thought. He could barely stand without falling; he'd had to hold onto Crowley just to move a few metres, and that had been done agonisingly slowly. How could they join the people skating like they danced a waltz on ice every morning without making utter fools of themselves? He'd have to, what, hold Crowley's hand, or something? God forbid.

'No, no, I don't think that's such a good idea,' Aziraphale said. He could already imagine Crowley's answering attempt at temptation. He wouldn't budge. He swore it.

'Fine, how about going to watch that puppeteer, then?'

Aziraphale nodded, too surprised that Crowley relented to do much else. They slowly made their way to the puppet show's tent, hand on each other's shoulders once more. Aziraphale tried to focus on not falling over rather than on the fact that before today, Crowley and he hadn't ever touched.

-

The puppet show had been for children. Aziraphale and Crowley walked away with different reactions to the experience.

Aziraphale had been delighted. It had been a simple story, a sort of adapted version of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The puppets had been wonderous works of craftsmanship and, in Aziraphale's opinion, the actors voicing them had performed really rather well. It had been _charming_, even if it hadn't been quite up to the standards of theatre Aziraphale normally supported.

Crowley had thought it silly. _Of course it's silly_, Aziraphale had tried to explain; _It's for young children!_ The only redeeming quality, Crowley said, was that it hadn't been an adaptation of one of Shakespeare's 'gloomy ones'.

Now, they were progressing down the river at such a slow pace that Aziraphale was convinced a snail could overtake them. He used the time to look at the wares of the tradesmen who had set up a haphazard aisle of tents and stalls. His left arm ached somewhat from where he had it slung over Crowley's shoulder; it was all well and good for Crowley, who's corporation had the luck of being an uncomfortable couple of inches taller than his own.

He startled when he felt Crowley's arm slide off his own shoulder.

'No, don't-' he started, about to plead that Crowley not let go lest he fall on the unforgiving ice again. He stopped mid-sentence because his gloved hand suddenly found itself full of Crowley's gloved hand.

He stared at their joined hands. How terribly strange, seeing them like that together. Black, fur-lined leather gloves so much more elegant than his own old woolly white ones. They'd never touched before today. Now they were holding hands.

'Come on, angel, let's go have a look at that man's stuff over there,' Crowley said, moving forward. Aziraphale felt a tug and he was being pulled along, but now the ice felt somehow flatter and a little more stable beneath his feet in comparison to the oil-slick mountain range it had felt like before. He stared in wonder at the back of Crowley's head. He wanted to squeeze that hand in his, make sure it was really there, but he was afraid. What if Crowley drew away?

The man towards whom they had moved was in fact selling books. Aziraphale was quick to turn his attention from Crowley to the books, richly bound as they were. Some even had gilt along the page edges.

It was therefore he missed the look of besotted fondness on Crowley's face, directed solely on him. Perhaps he wouldn't have recognised it for what it was, anyway, as unused to seeing it as he was. Crowley very rarely let anything but annoyance or a smug grin take presence on his features.

The books were a little overpriced, regardless of how pretty they were. Aziraphale reckoned that the prices had been increased a little to make up for the transportation from the shop to the river-top stall. He still smiled pleasantly and thanked the bookseller for his time as he and Crowley moved away.

'Oh, look,' he said, 'There's a crowd at that stall. Let's go see why.'

Crowley gave him a look that seemed to say _Why? _He chose to ignore it and this time took the lead himself, tugging at Crowley's hand as they precariously made their way across the ice.

The crowd was bigger than it looked from a few metres away. They pushed their heads through whatever cracks between the hoard they could find and eventually found themselves near the front, looking at the small stall of a printer. He was engraving and inking and pressing a great number of little cards with various names and the date and with the fact that the card had been printed on the Thames. Aziraphale turned to Crowley in excitement.

'Look, how wonderful!' He said, completely taken with the human inclination to make memories despite their short lives. To create something from nothing, to have something to hold which would prompt a memory of a time and a place and, maybe, a person.

He had a pebble from Eden that he had snuck into the folds of his robe. It was kept in a locked little drawer in his bureau. Sometimes, if he was craving a memory of how it had been to be a _proper_ angel and hold a flaming sword, he would take it out and hold it. Somehow, it only ever reminded him of how he had stood side by side with Crowley and used his wings to shelter the both of them from the first ever rainfall.

Crowley pushed to the very front, dragging a surprised and unsuspecting Aziraphale with him.

'A card, if you would, good sir,' he said, and slapped a sixpence on the worktop.

'And who's name do you want on it?' The printer replied. The sign attached to his stall announced that he was a Mr George Croom.

'Aziraphale. That's A, Z, I, R. A, P, H, A, L, E.'

Aziraphale blushed in shock and warm happiness. Crowley was buying him a souvenir card? How terribly kind, how terribly unexpected.

'Just a moment, sir.' Croom replied. While they waited, Aziraphale eyed the samples of his work that Croom had pinned to the wood of his stall, desperately trying to not think about how much he wanted to tighten his hold on Crowley's hand and perhaps even never let go. That was silly. _That_ wasn't _proper_ angelic behaviour.

He told himself instead that he wanted to keep holding Crowley's hand so badly merely because he wanted to make sure he didn't run off and do anything demonic. Maybe if Croom had taken just a minute or two longer to complete the card, he would have succeeded in convincing himself of that.

'Here you go, sir,' Croom said, handing the completed card to Crowley. Aziraphale thanked him graciously and the two of them moved away from the crowd to stand next to another makeshift pub.

Crowley gave Aziraphale the card.

It read: _Printed on the River Thames that year of the Great Frost, 18th of February 1684, for Mr Azerafel._ Croom's signature was at the bottom.

'Thank you, Crowley,' Aziraphale said, with more feeling and sincerity than he had ever spoken to Crowley before. He had bought him a card for no other reason than for a memory.

'Shut up.' Crowley scowled, but Aziraphale saw the softening of his eyes behind his sunglasses.

The sun was setting on London. It was getting ever colder and some merchants were packing up their wares, some visitors heading towards the banks to go home. The pub they were next to, though, was still bustling with activity, a fire lit to keep patrons warm and alcohol being served freely.

'Another mulled wine?' Aziraphale asked.

'Go on, then.'

They made their way to one of the only unoccupied tables, tripping on the ice only once or twice but always stabilising each other. They had gotten a lot better, over the course of the day, at the whole skating thing, but Aziraphale was glad for the continued support. Crowley wouldn't let him fall.

Sitting, though, meant that their hands no longer had any excuse to be together. Aziraphale regretfully drew his away from Crowley's and tried to stop thinking about it at all.

Mulled wine should have to be enough to warm his fingers, now.


End file.
